Grasping at Straws
by n-e-o-nT O A S T E R md
Summary: When an accident causes Erica to lose her memory, Stiles and Scott take it upon themselves to try and help her get it back. But what happens when she accidentally discovers something she's not supposed to?


Once again it was midnight and I was out running. Each land of my foot crunched several leaves, and my breath puffed out in pale white clouds before me. It was cold, really cold, but I liked it better that way. Though the slightly dangerous habit was old, this trail that I was on was completely new to me. My family had just been uprooted from our comfortable home out east and shipped off to this normally sweltering area. But night was different. Once the sun finally dropped from the sky and the moon rose there was a nice chill to the air that filled me with exhilaration. Off in the distance I swore I heard a howl. Nervously I shifted the hat that sat on top of my slightly blond curly hair which was momentarily pulled back tightly in a ponytail so it would stay more out of my way than usual when I ran. It was a ridiculous fear, but for as long as I could remember I had been terrified of werewolves. I knew that it was insanely improbable for the creatures that plagued my nightmares to be real, but that didn't stop me from fearing them. A bit of sweat stung my eye, but I kept running. Then there was a rustle behind me. Or was it in front of me? I couldn't exactly pinpoint its location. I picked up my pace, while constantly checking my surroundings for any sign of a rapist or kidnapper. _'God, come on Erica, you need to stop being so paranoid!'_ I told myself as I could feel my heart beat beginning to beat faster and faster from the growing tension I was beginning to feel.

Then, suddenly with no warning I felt something insanely solid slam into the left side of my body. If I didn't know any better I would have said it was a car, but there was no way a car would have been able to navigate the intricate maze of the trees that this forest provided. As the object collided with my body, my head was violently smashed into a tree. Pain shot through my skull and I let out a cry of anguish. I crumpled to the ground at the base of the tree clutching my throbbing head with my left hand. I heard more leaf rustling. Could it have been the footfalls of another human being? I couldn't tell with my eyes glued shut. A voice reached my ears.

"Oh my god. Are you alright?" The voice belonged to a male, who I guessed was around my age due to the awkward voice crack. I wanted to tell him yes, that I was fine, but some part of me knew that I most definitely was not. Pain was radiating down the right side of my body focusing in my head and my right shoulder which had just moments ago collided with the tree. Worse of all, my thoughts had started to become muddy. It was getting more and more difficult to form coherent sentences in my head. "What's your name?" Oddly enough when he asked me this question, I couldn't remember. I had thought it only moments ago, but now it was lost.

"I… I dunno." I managed to mumble as I opened my eyes to look up at the boy.

"What?" The boy looked scared and concerned. For a moment I swore I saw his golden brown eyes shine in the moonlight. "Do you know where you are or what day it is?" I pondered this for a brief moment.

"Not really." Then I caught a glimpse of something shining on my wrist. "I know what time it is though." I said sarcastically holding up my left arm showing him my watch. He looked at it as though it was some foreign object that he'd never seen before.

"You won't for too much longer. Looks like it's broken." He said, turning my wrist towards me.

"Well fuck." I cursed, frowning at my broken watch. As I mourned my watch the boy pulled out his phone.

"Hey, Stiles? Can you come and find me?" As I continued to stare at my watch, my vision started to blur slightly. "There's a girl here. I think she's really hurt." My head started spinning so much that I grabbed it with my left hand, trying to sturdy it, even though I wasn't moving it at all. "She doesn't remember her name." I tried to blink away the blurriness but it just kept getting worse. "I think she might have a concussion." The spinning was now so awful I swore I was going to throw up.

"Make everything stop moving…" I mumbled, squeezing my eyes shut once again.

"You better get here quick." He said to the person on the other end of the phone before hanging up. "It's okay, I've got someone coming to help." I opened my eyes and looked at him confused.

"Whatza Stiles?" I asked. A blurry smile spread across his face.

"He's a good friend of mine, and he's gonna find us. Don't you worry."

"Imnaworried. Jusssa lil tired." I said. Black was starting to eat away at the edges of my vision.

"Stay with me now alright?" He said, putting his hand on my shoulder.

"I cantreely move." I said with a slightly snarky tone. He laughed a little at this, and I didn't really understand what he found so funny. It was true, I couldn't really feel the tips of my fingers, or toes and I didn't know if I had sustained any injuries to my legs, so I wasn't moving anytime soon. Not too long after that I heard an engine roaring towards the two of us. A set of headlights blinded the little bit of vision that I was still clinging to at the moment. Someone hopped out of the front seat of the jeep and ran over to us.

"Damnit Scott! What did you do now?" He shouted at the boy sitting next to me.

"NOTHING!" Scott replied, sounding defensive.

"Whatever." He said squatting down next to me. "Hey, listen, we're gonna get you help okay? Can you still hear me? Hey, you're in good hands okay?" I wanted to respond to the person, but something was dulling the connection between my brain and my vocal cords, so all that I was able to do was string together a couple of strange noises. "Scott, she doesn't sound like she's doing too good, we should probably take her to your mom."

"Yeah, that's probably a really good idea." He said, and I felt myself being scooped up by a pair of arms and carried off to what I guess was the car that the other person had arrived in. Before the last of my vision was swallowed by the darkness, I swore I heard the other person say "I swear if this is because of your wolfy-ness I just might beat them out of you." But it was probably my mind creating some strange delusion.

The next thing I remember clearly is the hospital room in which I came to. I was in and out for a lot of the drive there, but I do remember being leaned against the driver and how fantastic they smelled. If I would have been able to form coherent sentences I would have told them so, but speaking wasn't exactly my forte at that particular moment. Anyways, when I woke up, a woman with curly hair that was pulled back in a ponytail was standing over me.

"Good, you're awake." She said, dabbing at the spot on my head that felt like it had been smashed in with a baseball bat with something that made it feel like it was on fire. "My name's Nurse Mcall, and my son and his friend brought you in. They found you leaning against a tree." That sounded about right. I definitely recalled there being a tree involved in my injuries. "Scott says you don't remember your name?" Yep, that was right too. Nurse Mcall sounded much more concerned about it than I was. Honestly what was the big deal about it? Didn't Shakespeare say something once in one of his plays about names not being important? That which we call a rose by any other name would smell as sweet, right? "Well, I thought you'd like to know we found a student ID on you from a high school and your name is Erica Tillman. You have a concussion, obviously some memory loss, and a slightly fractured collar bone along with some nice scrapes from the bark." Damn. I hope whatever hit me is doing better than I am. "Do you remember anything at all about what happened?" She asked. I struggled to shake my head, but managed to do so very slowly. "Alright then, after I'm done fixing you up I'll let you get some rest."

"Hey, Mrs. M! How's she doing?" A boy with short dark hair said as he popped his head in the open door. Then he saw me sitting there. "Oh! You're awake!" He said, sauntering in and wandering over to my hospital bed.

"Stiles, maybe now's not the best time. She needs her rest." I blinked a few times as Stiles gave Nurse Mcall a sad, pleading look as though he was trying to silently beg her to stay.

"So you're a Stiles." I managed to say rather hoarsely. Both Stiles and Nurse Mcall gave me a strange look, and then Nurse Mcall started laughing a little bit. My brain still wasn't all that clear so I didn't really comprehend why she was laughing.

"Yeah, I'm a Stiles." He said smiling.

"Alright, let's go, Erica needs to recover." Nurse Mcall was starting to head out, but Stiles lingered for a moment. "Come on Stiles." She urged motioning to the door to my room. He looked at me then back at Nurse Mcall.

"Is it alright if I hang around for a little bit?" He asked motioning towards me.

"As long as Erica doesn't mind I don't mind." She said.

"It's fine with me. It'd be nice to get a little bit better of an idea of what is going on here." I said, hoping that maybe Stiles would be able to fill in some of the missing pieces in my head.

"Alright, but don't keep her up too late Stiles." Nurse Mcall said as she closed the door behind her. All of a sudden Stiles was bombarding me with questions.

"So you don't remember anything about what happened before the accident?"

"…No."

"Why were you even out there that late?"

"I think I was going for a run. I think that's something I usually do at night." My uncertainty intrigued him.

"But why at night?"

"It's cooler at night. Better for breathing. At least that's what I think. Although I'm not sure why I do it either 'cause I'm scared of-." I quickly ended my sentence, not wanting to sound like a crazy person in front of someone I was fairly certain I had only just met.

"Of what? The dark?"

"No, that's not it… It's something else." I said, avoiding eye contact with him.

"What?"

"You'll think I'm mad."

"Trust me, with what I've seen it takes a lot to make me think someone's crazy. In fact, I bet if I told you about half of the stuff me and Scott have seen together, you'd think we're hallucinating drug addicts."

"Well… Ever since I was little I think… I've been scared of… Werewolves." I confessed, nervously toying with a fraying edge of the blanket that was covering my legs.

"… What?" Stiles was now staring at me wide eyed and mouth hanging slightly open.

"I told you. You think I'm crazy!"

"No… I definitely don't." Stiles muttered. Then he looked back up at me. "How do you know you're a scared of werewolves? I thought your hit to the head made you lose almost all of your memory." I thought about this for a moment.

"I think there are some things that you can't forget no matter how hard you smack your head into a tree." I started. "Like my fear of werewolves. Or the fact that I know I'm not going to eat hardly any of that gross food they have sitting there, sans the pudding cup." I said motioning to the tray of steamed vegetables and what I guessed was beef stroganoff. The wafting scent of the broccoli almost made me vomit.

"Weird…" Stiles said, looking over at the food.

"So no one's really told me yet where I am." I said looking at him hopefully.

"Oh! You're in Beacon Hills, more precisely, in Beacon Hills Memorial Hospital to be more specific, on the second floor room 221." He told me, very matter of factly.

"Has anyone come to visit me yet? Besides you that is." I asked, hoping that the answer would be yes and that whoever had visited me would have some answers as to who I was.

"Uh, well, no… Not yet." My face fell at this response.

"Oh…"

"Not that they didn't want to! I mean they probably do, but none of the Tillmans in Beacon Hills have a missing daughter named Erica." He said. I just nodded, not really sure what to say.

"I'm tired, can you go please?" I asked, not really wanting to speak to anyone right now.

"Yeah, sure… Yeah. I'll leave my number here so you can call me when you wake up." He said, scribbling down ten numbers on a sheet of paper.

"Thanks." I mumbled, taking the paper and curling up under the blankets of my hospital bed.

"Good night." He said as he left the room, turning off the light as he left.

"Good night."


End file.
